Part iii

. § 324 and appendix.

With this last statement most people will be inclined to agree. There is only a part of the truth in Napoleon’s dictum that “God is on the side of the biggest battalions”; or in the old saying that war requires three necessaries—in the first place, money; in the second place, money; and in the third, money. Money is a great deal: it is a necessity; but what we call national back-bone and character is more. So far we are with Hegel. But he goes further. In peace, says he, mankind would grow effeminate and degenerate in luxury. This opinion was expressed in forcible language in his own time by Schiller,[78] and in more recent years by Count Moltke. “Perpetual peace,” says a letter of the great general,[79] “is a dream and not a beautiful dream either: war is part of the divine order of the world. During war are developed the noblest virtues which belong to man—courage and self-denial, fidelity to duty and the spirit of self-sacrifice: the soldier is called upon to risk his life. Without war the world would sink in materialism.”[80] “Want and misery, disease, suffering and war,” he says elsewhere, “are all given elements in the Divine order of the universe.” Moltke’s eulogy of war, however, is somewhat modified by his additional statement that “the greatest kindness in war lies in its being quickly ended.” (Letter to Bluntschli, 11th Dec., 1880.)[81] The great forces which we recognise as factors in the moral regeneration of mankind are always slow of action as they are sure. War, if too quickly over, could not have the great moral influence which has been attributed to it. The explanation may be that it is not all that it naturally appears to a great and successful general. Hegel, Moltke, Trendelenburg, Treitschke[82] and the others—not Schiller[83] who was able to sing the blessings of peace as eloquently as of war—were apt to forget that war is as efficient a school for forming vices as virtues; and that, moreover, those virtues which military life is said to cultivate—courage, self-sacrifice and the rest—can be at least as perfectly developed in other trials. There are in human life dangers every day bravely met and overcome which are not less terrible than those which face the soldier, in whom patriotism may be less a sentiment than a duty, and whose cowardice must be dearly paid.

[78] Cf. _Die Braut von Messina_:—

“Denn der Mensch verkümmert im Frieden, Müssige Ruh’ ist das Grab des Muths. Das Gesetz ist der Freund des Schwachen, Alles will es nur eben machen, Möchte gerne die Welt verflachen; Aber der Krieg lässt die Kraft erscheinen, Alles erhebt er zum Ungemeinen, Selber dem Feigen erzeugt er den Muth.”

This passage perhaps scarcely gives a fair representation of Schiller’s views on the question, which, if we judge from _Wilhelm Tell_, must have been very moderate. War, he says, in this oft-quoted passage, is sometimes a necessity. There is a limit to the power of tyranny and, when the burden becomes unbearable, an appeal to Heaven and the sword.

_Wilhelm Tell_: Act. II. Sc. 2.

“Nein, eine Grenze hat Tyrannenmacht. Wenn der Gedrückte nirgends Recht kann finden, Wenn unerträglich wird die Last greift er Hinauf getrosten Muthes in den Himmel Und holt herunter seine ew’gen Rechte, Die droben hangen unveräusserlich Und unzerbrechlich, wie die Sterne selbst— Der alte Urstand der Natur kehrt wieder, Wo Mensch dem Menschen gegenüber steht— Zum letzten Mittel, wenn kein andres mehr Verfangen will, ist ihm das Schwert gegeben.”

[79] Letter to Bluntschli, dated Berlin, 11th Dec., 1880 (published in Bluntschli’s _Gesammelte Kleine Schriften_, Vol. II., p. 271).

[80] Cf. Tennyson’s _Maud_: